Lonnell Higgins

This essay Lonnell Higgins has a total of 1896 words and 8 pages.
﻿
Lonnell Higgins
Ms. Schock
Critical Reading & Writing I
7 November 2016
Salaries in the MLB
Professional sports athletes get paid millions and millions to play the sport that they have played since they were 4, but it is different for Major League Baseball. There is a Caste system inside professional baseball: Rookie Season, Short Season, Class A Short Season, Class A (Single A or A), Double AA, Triple AAA; in which does not max over $65,000/yr.( and you have to be the Albert Pujols of AAA to get that salary) when MLB (Major League Baseball) average is $4,000,000/yr (Jeff Blank Baseball Blog). If you put your body on the line from March - September for 76 games, would you want to get paid for your hard effort? MiLB (Minor League Baseball) players have much lower salaries than MLB players, in which hinders player's will to play.
Let's put it into your perspective, you are playing for the Memphis Redbirds (Double-AA St. Louis Cardinals) and you are playing your heart out day in and day out, waking up at 5:30AM to go lift weights and take some ground balls to only be able to go to sleep until 12 AM and do it all over again, while only getting paid $1,500/monthly for circa 3 months. Would you suffice with your living setting and economic stance? I'm pretty sure you wouldn't like it at all, you'll have to get a second job and possibly side-job. Now all of a sudden, the Professional Baseball becomes a hobby to stay in shape rather then a lifestyle and a dream to look up too. Now lets go to somebody who's actually done it, Dilson Herrera, he plays for the New York Mets. He spent 1 season in the MLB but keeps going back to Triple-AAA and back up. Now think, his salary while he was playing for the Mets was $507,000 and when he got called down to Triple-AAA, it immediately went down to $41,400. To be precise, while in MLB, he made $42,250/monthly but now only making $3,450/monthly in Triple-AAA. So what about his nice house? Nice Cars? Luxuries that he now doesn't have enough money to make monthly payments on.
There is a rich background in this study from unhappy players to players filing lawsuits against the MLB. Garrett Broshuis played in the minor leagues for six seasons before he decided to leave baseball because he wasn't making enough money for he and his wife to start a family. Broshuis went to law school in 2011 before joining a St. Louis law firm and is now in the midst of a legal fight to improve wages for minor leaguers. Some earn what amounts to less than the minimum wage with Class A players starting at $1,100 a month for a five-month season. Double-A players start at $1,500 a month and Triple-A players $2,150. A player in the minors who is on the 40-man major league roster earns $41,400 a season. " Low salaries have long been a tradition in the minor leagues, which players use as a stepping stone to the majors, though most never make it. "(Jacksonville) For instance , as Vito Stellino said in his ar ticle , " t he late Hall of Famer Yogi Berra once said he made $35 every two weeks in Norfolk in 1943 and his mother would send him $10 or $15 for meals. Berra said his mother told him, "Don't let your father know you are hungry or he'll make you come home.'' Factoring in inflation, the Class A minor leaguers don't make much more now than Berra did. His $70 a month would be worth $979.69 in today's dollars . "
Everybody, yes li terally everybody at a Minor League Game gets paid higher then the actual players themselves per hour. Ticket takers, scoreboard operators, public address announcers, official scorers. Groundskeepers, team publicists, even the Purple Raptor mascot makes more than the players. As Paul Doughert y said, " A kid playing in Class A at, say, the Reds' affiliate in Billings, MT, can expect to earn $1,100 a month, for a season that started June 17 and ends Sept. 8. That comes to approximately $3,200 a

Read essay without registering

Donate an essay now and get the full essay emailed you. Upload File
Acceptable files: .txt, .doc, .docx, .rtfEmail Address